‘Elon Musk doesn’t know what he’s doing’, says former Twitter executive

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Elon Musk “doesn’t know what he’s doing” with Twitter and is “making everyone alarmed”, a former executive has said, after major brands paused their advertising spend on the platform and the company laid off thousands of staff.

Bruce Daisley, Twitter’s vice-president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa from 2015 to 2020, said he was devastated by the undemocratic changes at Twitter and would leave the platform with “no hesitation” if there was a good alternative.

“I think Elon thought he was going to come in and solve everything and very quickly he’s going to work out that it’s far more complicated,” he told podcast The News Agents this weekend. “It’s pretty evident from every public action that he’s taken with this whole acquisition: he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

Daisley, who was Twitter’s most senior executive in London, also criticised Musk’s plan to charge users $8 a month for a “blue tick” verification symbol. He told the Observer Musk was trading the “legitimacy of verified sources” for “pocket money”. “The fact that we have no recourse over that is undemocratic,” he said.

And he tweeted in support of an Twitter employee who was sacked on Friday amid mass layoffs, whom he described as having “helped battle against abusive tweets against high-profile Twitter users”. Daisley wrote: “In four weeks, when there’s a racist tweet from the World Cup on the front pages, remember Musk chose to let that happen.”

The fierce criticism comes after Musk implemented a raft of changes at Twitter that have sparked concern about his approach to misinformation and hate speech.

On Friday, the Tesla billionaire – who bought Twitter on 27 October for $44bn – laid off about 50% of Twitter employees, saying he had “no choice” as the firm is bleeding more than $4m a day. The layoffs reportedly gutted teams that cover human rights, ethics and curation. It also included people in moderation, although Twitter’s head of safety, Yoel Roth, said “core moderation capabilities” remained.

On Saturday, Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder and former chief executive, suggested the mass sackings were necessary because he had expanded too fast. “I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company too quickly. I apologise for that,” said Dorsey, who stepped down from Twitter’s board in May and has supported Musk’s takeover.

A few hours after the mass layoffs, US president Joe Biden called out Musk and criticised misinformation on Twitter, telling a campaign event in Chicago that he had bought an outfit that “spews lies all across the world”.

Musk has previously said he would liberalise Twitter’s policies in the name of freedom of speech, indicating that he will allow previously banned accounts to rejoin, but has stressed that Twitter’s “strong commitment” to moderation remains “absolutely unchanged”.

Last week, he announced the formation of a content moderation council, bringing together “widely diverse viewpoints”, and said no decisions on moderation or account reinstatements would be taken until that council had convened.

Even so, Twitter appears to have spooked some advertisers, with several reportedly having paused their ad spend and others understood to be considering their position.

General Mills, known for Cheerios and Lucky Charms cereals, became the latest to pause its advertising on the platform last Thursday, with a spokesperson saying it would “continue to monitor” Twitter’s new direction. Pfizer, Mondelez, General Motors and Volkswagen are also reported to have temporarily halted their spend.

In a tweet on Friday, Musk said Twitter had seen a “massive drop in revenue” and blamed “activist groups” for pressuring advertisers. “Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America,” he told his 114m followers. He subsequently suggested that he would publish the names of advertisers that pause their spend, tweeting that “a thermonuclear name & shame is exactly what will happen if this continues”.

Earlier in the week, Stop Toxic Twitter, a coalition including the NAACP, had called on the platform’s 20 biggest advertisers to tell Musk they would suspend advertising if he followed through on plans to “undermine the social network’s community standards and content moderation”.

Stephan Loerke of the World Federation of Advertisers said a number of brands were considering their actions, but would judge Twitter on “facts and action”, rather than speculation. “We are hearing from the ownership of Twitter that they remain committed to the progress made so far. We will be collaborating with Twitter on that basis and we will be judging them on actions,” he told the Observer. He added that brands had learned “how important it is to control the content they appear next to, because people will associate brands with content”.

Some users have also threatened to quit the platform, with figures provided to the Observer suggesting a spike in signups for alternative platforms such as Mastodon, a decentralised social network touted as a Twitter alternative.